Accessibility

We aim to make this website accessible to everyone. Below we describe the standards and techniques we have used to achieve this.

If you have any questions or suggestions or problems regarding the accessibility of this website, please do not hesitate to contact us. We hope to continually improve the use of the site for all of our visitors. The website is constantly evolving, and will be considerably expanded and refined in the coming years.

Text sizes

All text is resizable, so if it is too small or large for easy reading you can use your browser settings to display it at your preferred size.

If you have already selected a non-standard text size in your browser settings, the size you prefer will be visible from the moment you enter the website, and you won’t need to reset it for each page.

Colour and contrast

The colours for this website have been chosen to provide visual contrast. The level of contrast between any text and its background meets the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.0, Level Triple-A. We used the WebAIM colour contrast testing tool to check the contrast.

If you prefer to control colours using your browser, you can find guidance on doing this on the Abilitynet website.

Images

We attempt to provide a text alternative for all images that are part of the editorial content of this website. This alternative text is as short and to the point as possible, whilst giving a full description of the image, and will be read out to those using screen-reading software. As a volunteer-driven site with frequent additions of contributor-led content, there may be occasions where we have missed adding the text alternative. If you come across such an image, please contact us and we shall be pleased to resolve the issue.

Where an image is simply a background image for aesthetic purposes we don’t add alternative text, as this would add unnecessary ‘noise’ for people using screen-readers.

Videos and audio

We ultimately aim to offer transcriptions of all the audio and video interviews presented on the site, so that people who are unable to see and hear to have access to the information. However, there are occasions where, because of the large number of voluntarily contributed web pages, our accessibility standards will not be perfect. If you find any particular interviews which require additional transcription, you are welcome to contact us and we will try to make the transcripts available as soon as we can.

Identifying the content of each page

Page titles are different on each unique page, and give a clear indication of the content of the page.

Headings divide the page where necessary, and can be used to get an overview of the content.

Navigating from page to page

You should be able to reach all parts of the website by following links that can be navigated from your keyboard. This means that if you have restricted sight or mobility, you are able to use your keyboard tab key or switch device to move from link to link.

All links will open in your current browser window unless specified.

When writing links for the main body of the text, our editors aim to be:

Clear: the links will give a sense of what the destination page is about.

Distinct: each link is different, unless it leads to the same page as any others using the same wording.

Discrete: the links do not need the surrounding text to explain their purpose.

Short and to the point.

Features provided by third-party sites

Because we are drawing on content from a wide range of sources, this website includes third-party technology and features. These include:

Adobe PDF downloadable documents

Embedded links and content from Facebook and Twitter

Google Maps (third party map application)

YouTube (third party video application)

We may not be able to fully resolve any accessibility issues related to this third-party technology. However, if you do identify any issues that are causing you problems, let us know and we will do what we can to help.

Useful resources

BBC My Web, My Way offers information to help get the most out of the accessibility features on your computer.

To access documents on this website in PDF or Word format, you need software provided by Adobe and Microsoft. You may well have this software on your computer already. If not, here are the download links: